


Make Sure You Don't Let Your Food Spoil, But Don't Waste It Either

by InfiniteInMystery



Series: Gintoki's Angsty Mental Moments [3]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Eating Disorders, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, One Shot, The Big Sads, Vomiting, probably depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfiniteInMystery/pseuds/InfiniteInMystery
Summary: Gintoki ends up having a physical response to the guilt he feels.
Series: Gintoki's Angsty Mental Moments [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767850
Comments: 3
Kudos: 64





	Make Sure You Don't Let Your Food Spoil, But Don't Waste It Either

That first time Gintoki did it, it was just _something that happened_. He hadn't intended to do it, hadn't really thought about it. He had just gotten the urge, and he had rolled with it.

It hadn't even been that bad of a week. Gintoki had woken up every day to do the usual – nothing crazy, no plot arcs, no plot twists that left Gintoki crying for weeks – but somehow, the lack of chaos was just as bad as having chaos. Somehow, Gintoki was waking up just as tired as he had been the day before, if not worse.

“You've spent all day moping! Just lying on that couch like you're good for nothing! We didn't even work today, how is Mommy supposed to cook dinner when we can't even afford rice?” Kagura complained, just like she had been for the past few days. She was waving her chopsticks around, pointing at Gintoki and Shinpachi and Sadaharu and everything else she could. Her face was scrunched up, a look Gintoki didn't like seeing on her. _I'm the reason she's so upset. I don't even feel bad, though._

Kagura loved rice. She loved every single grain Gintoki gave her, and she went back for more. Nothing in Gintoki's fridge ever expired, nothing stuck around long enough to go bad. Kagura was cost-efficient and diligent when it came to food. What was she even complaining about?

“ _I_ cooked dinner, not Mommy.” Gintoki stated, already familiar with Kagura's imaginary mother role.

“That's what I mean!” Kagura yelled, before jabbing aggressively at her rice. “Even the rice tastes funny! Like you made it with sadness or something! What did you do?”

Gintoki stopped chewing for a second, that comment striking him _hard_ , piercing through his chest and straight into his heart. It cut like he had been stabbed on the battlefield, the sharp, cold steel sliding inch by inch into his chest until he was gasping his next breath under the pressure.

His breath was inhaled silently, Kagura still going off and complaining about ruining the food while she shoved rice into her mouth. Shinpachi tried to defend, or at least _excuse,_ Gintoki's actions, but his deflections were weak.

Gintoki's eyes were locked on the rice in contemplation, his hand beneath his own bowl suddenly ice cold just like the one holding the chopsticks, the blood and death and suffering and cruelty staining his hands. He was aware of it. Was aware of the invisible scars on his hands, aware of the lives they had ruined and taken. He was aware that every time he touched something, every time he _made_ something, he was greedily sinning.

Sometimes, Gintoki found he couldn't reach out, couldn't touch anything like his fingers would taint them, would smear them with the death he had absorbed into himself. Sometimes, Gintoki found that the guilt came back without warning, reminding him that he was floundering in the abyss between life, death, and even purgatory.

He was alone. He was hollow. He should have killed himself after he took Shouyou's life.

Gintoki quietly excused himself.

Thundering inside Gintoki's skull was blood, sweat, and tears. He could taste the iron on his tongue suddenly, the ashes from the burning villages and forests. His hands were unsteady, the hilt of his sword in them as he quickly made his decision, his teacher, or his friends. Burning the back of his eyes, the tears weren't shed, but they did gloss behind his closed lids.  
  
In the bathroom, Gintoki's stomach roiled angrily so he hurried to lock the door and rush to the toilet. It was almost funny, he thought, as he bent over at the waist with one hand to the back of the toilet's tank, funny how easy his body just accepted the need to vomit. It was almost second nature to him now, with how often he found himself puking his guts after a night spent drinking six too many. Gintoki just leaned over, and gravity did the rest.

It was easy. Startlingly so.

He tried his best to be quiet about it, didn't need to give the kids anything else to complain about. He had enough practice, had woken up Kagura too many nights after the bar that he had learned how to be sick often without being heard. And with the regularity of his drinking habits, Gintoki's stomach was empty in moments like it was sick of his bullshit and sick of being abused.

Standing up from the toilet, Gintoki didn't think anything of it. He simply washed off his face in the sink after, before brushing his teeth and staring at himself in the mirror, wondering why he was the way he was.

But the second time it happened, Gintoki realized this was a little _too_ easy, and that the pay off seemed to be worth doing again.

Gintoki had fucked up his job because he simply hadn't been paying much attention, had been daydreaming, fixated on things come and gone. He had dropped a pail of paint and splashed it all over the client's brand new hardwood floor, and the kids had been right there to clean it up for him before it could dry and cost them new flooring and free work. The two of them hadn't stopped complaining about it either, going off about it the whole walk to the next job. Hadn't even stopped during the next job either, just constantly mouthing off, complaining.  
  
Maybe they were having a bad week? Maybe Gintoki should have paid more attention? Maybe he should have thought critically about it instead of just assuming that everything coming out of their mouths was because of _him._

“What are we going to do?” Kagura asked in that tone of hers, the one that was starting to grate on Gintoki's nerves and make him feel like an unwanted child. “How are we gonna make money, Pachi? When our son can't even be nice to the customers? One day we won't have _any_ customers and then we'll have to close our shop and go begging on the street, hoping someone will pity an old couple and their sad little dog.”

“Kagura, don't you think you're being a little dramatic?” Shinpachi asked. He sighed though, one hand to his forehead. “It's just a phase, Kagura. He'll grow out of it.”

 _Just a phase._ Gintoki didn't try to defend himself. Didn't even try to offer up an excuse. He didn't know if it was a phase unless he considered his entire life a phase in the grand scheme of the planet as a whole.

They were only fifteen minutes away from home when Kagura saw a food stand. Gintoki saw it first, saw Kagura's attention whip to it like a hound seeing a bunny, and he preemptively knew how the next fifteen minutes would go down.

Suddenly, Kagura's stomach growled so loudly that even Shinpachi sighed, glancing to Gintoki before Kagura even asked to stop. Gintoki sighed in response to Shinpachi's sigh, thinking back on how much he had been paid that day, damages deducted, wondering if he should just lecture her into saving money. Kagura had complained about saving _earlier_ , it would be funny to scold her now and let her learn from the consequences of speaking out preemptively, but he realized that after his shitty behavior, after being so emotionally awful for so so long, the kids deserved a treat.

“Gin-chan, I'm hungry.” Kagura said casually, unaware of the mental dilemma going on behind her.

And that was how Gintoki found himself buying them a fancy lunch for the second time that week, listening to the kids complain about his shitty work ethic and his bad attitude lately. And that was how Gintoki found himself sneaking away from the kids when they started to head back home, snuck away with stealth both they and Gintoki didn't realize he had, sneaking away into the nearest alley. He had cold hands again, a rumble in his stomach while his brain seemed to shudder, thoughts and bad emotions flickering on repeat so fast he couldn't even grasp what the problem was. He just felt dizzy and sick and at the very core of his soul, _sad._

Gintoki placed his palms flat against the wall as he bent over, and just like that, everything inside of him came sliding back up.

Back on the street only moments later, Gintoki caught up to the kids feeling a little emotionally hindered but physically better.

“Like how can you fall behind?” Kagura asked, spinning on her heel and pointing a finger in Gintoki's face. She must have heard him when he caught up because he wasn't being accused of disappearing. “Have you even been listening to anything I've been saying?”

“No.” Gintoki said, because he hadn't been there and it seemed as though the kids never realized he had even been gone. _Should I be impressed I'm sneaky enough to get away, or depressed they didn't even realize?_

In the end, he settled with ignoring it.

“You never even listen to us when we talk! Your communication skills are awful! Pachi! We're going to have to find him a tutor!” Kagura complained, hands back on her hips as they made their way home. Gintoki didn't hear anything else she said, too caught up on the emptiness inside of him and how much it wasn't even bothering him. The hollowness was normal. Familiar. Perhaps even comforting. Since the start of the war, he had spent most of his life emotionally empty. Had spent another good portion of it starving and longing, turning his lightness into speed and quick attacks that had saved his life and his comrades, turning the burn in his stomach into a drive to live and kill and succeed. But now, there was no burn in his stomach just like there was no light in his eyes and no fire in his heart. He just had stained hands and empty promises, an empty shell lurking amongst the full and lively.

The next time it happened, Gintoki knew it was a silent problem.

Gintoki chose to ignore it.

It was one of those days where Gintoki got to sleep in. Kagura had gone home with Shinpachi the night before to have a movie night with him and Tae, had taken her monstrous dog with her.

So When the sun was high in the sky, Gintoki finally rolled out of bed. Kagura wasn’t there to wake him up demanding breakfast, wasn't there to bother him and hound him about the basic tasks he struggled to do. Meekly, he went through his morning routine without a thought bouncing in his skull, his movements more automated than strictly necessary.

He made breakfast after lunchtime. Sat down on his couch in his pajamas because he hadn't bothered to change yet, flipping the channel to the news. After, he started to scroll to see if there was anything good on TV, anything to do with his free time. He had started to hate having free time, had started to hate being alone in his house, but had also started to hate having errands to do and people constantly around him. Everything was starting to look so bleak. So grey. And he was so tired.

Gintoki didn't know what he wanted.

With breakfast finished and the bowl sitting on the coffee table, his thoughts briefly drifted when he heard the old lady yell downstairs over spilled milk, and suddenly, he got the _urge._ There had been no stress, no obvious trigger. One second Gintoki was on his couch staring at the TV without a single brain cell working in his skull, and the next he was in the bathroom leaning over the toilet, easily puking up his stomach contents like he had in fact just drank a whole bottle of whiskey to himself. He didn't know what had changed, where this instinct had come from. But he had hadn't even done anything to try and stop himself.

When he was done, he flushed the toilet, panting lightly. His eyebrows creased then as he moved over to his sink, staring at himself in the mirror in slight confusion. He didn't like the autopilot that had taken over him, didn't like the idea of just _casually_ doing _this_. This was bad, wasn't it? What was this about, now? _Is it the emptiness? The guilt?_

But his stomach felt better – had it even felt bad in the first place? – and Gintoki _generally_ felt better, so he washed his face and brushed his teeth extra well. He tucked the experience into the back of his mind, pinning it up with conflicted emotions he would analyze later. Maybe this was a one-time thing? Maybe he really had a stomach bug and was about to get sick?  
  
Later that day when Kagura came back home, she was surprised to see Gintoki had cleaned. Had _clean_ cleaned, every surface washed and dusted, the kitchen organized and every dish put away. She even praised him, which went straight to Gintoki's head, his good mood lighting up the room. Gintoki made her dinner with clean hands, their environment scrubbed like soap alone could wash away the negativity, and he didn't feel guilty about it. Didn't feel guilty about using his hands to cook, didn't feel guilty about sharing a meal with Kagura, didn't feel guilty about feeling okay.

He watched Kagura shove back every last grain of rice knowing that nothing perishable under his roof would ever go to waste. He didn't feel bad, he didn't feel dirty, and most importantly he didn't feel the _urge._

But he did it again a week later and after that, he accepted it as his new normal.


End file.
